Nigerian involved in crashed Ethiopian Airlines flight

NEWS DIGEST – One Nigerian, whose identity is yet to be ascertained, with a United Nations passport, was among the 157 people on board the ill-fated Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 which crashed minutes after take off from Addis Ababa to Nairobi, the Kenyan capital.

Altogether, 35 nationalities were involved in the crash which involved a Boeing 737-800 Max aircraft.

The accident occurred around Bishoftu (Debre Zeit) after the aircraft with registration numberET- AVJ took off at 08:38 am local time from Addis Ababa, Bole International Airport and lost contact at 08:44am.

Passengers’ information, released by the airline on Sunday, indicated that the destination country suffered the highest casualties with 32 of its nationals involved, followed by Canada which lost 18 nationals while Ethiopian nationals were 9.

Others were China, Italy and USA which lost eight citizens each; France and UK had seven nationals on board; Egypt 6; Germany 5; India and Slovakia had 4 each; Austria, Russia, Sweden lost three nationals each while Spain, Israel, Morocco, Poland lost two nationals each.

Other countries with one national on board were Belgium, Djibouti, Indonesia, Ireland, Mozambique, Norway, Rwanda, Saudi, Sudan, Somalia, Serbia, Togo, Uganda, Yemen and Nepal.